


Legacy

by ivorymorning



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 10:32:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6048237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorymorning/pseuds/ivorymorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had the idea once at 3 in the morning to do a Disney's Descendants With The Avengers AU, and this is the result of that. Some time in the future when the Avengers are parents. Because this is purely for fun (I'm fully aware it's physically impossible for some of them to have children) and because Descendants didn't explain who the other parent of each kid was, I don't have to either (for some of them). Some live on the base full time and others don't and for the most part they're like a big dysfunctional family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> age 10

She's hidden under the stairway, tucked up against the wall far enough to remain undetected but still able to see the legs and feet making their way down the floating stairs. This is how she likes it. Close to everyone but still maintaining a bit of distance. She likes her space, but she doesn't like to feel isolated. If she's being honest she flies under the radar way more than the others, but that's only because their voices are louder than hers. She knows they all mean well. 

She pulls her legs up to her chest and tucks a lock her her reddish brown hair behind an ear. Her sketchbook is in her lap with a half-finished charcoal drawing waiting to be completed. The light is dim under the stairs but she doesn't mind. She frowns slightly as she concentrates, turning her head this way and that to make sure her angles and contouring are right and smoothing the charcoal across the paper with careful, deliberate strokes. There's charcoal dust on her hands and remnants from her painting earlier across her arms, but she doesn't care. She always has something on her hands– paint, charcoal, pencil smudges, ink– and only bothers to wash it off when her mother reminds her to. The harder to reach places, at least. Her mind is usually occupied elsewhere, on a potential art project, on a current art project, on a chapter of the book she's reading, and she can't be bothered with trivial things when her mind is occupied. 

She pauses for a moment and closes her eyes. She likes to see if she can tell who's coming down the stairs by their footsteps. Cap's are deliberate. Bruce's are quiet. Thor's are loud. Tessa skips the bottom step. Ace skips the last three steps. But sometimes, when it's more difficult to tell, there's another way. She concentrates for a brief moment, focuses on one particular thought, and she can feel the emotions of the person she's envisioning. If they're close enough. She's never really tested the range, but she knows it currently encompasses the entire base. When she was younger they used to sometimes flood her mind without warning and in concentrated doses, making her thoughts swirl with emotions she didn't understand and often had never felt. She later learned she was feeling the heartbreak, the pain, the soul-wrenching despair and sorrow that was the ugly side of being an Avenger and a superhero; all the things they didn't want anyone else to know about and kept buried deep deep down, but not deep enough. Her mother said she cried incessantly as an infant when she felt them all at once and couldn't control it, and became unnervingly quiet and serious as a small child as they came with less intensity, but she's 10 now. She could exert some level of control over them, choosing when to let them in and being able to level them off so they weren't so concentrated. She'd also discovered that if she concentrated, she could also project emotions onto people and make them feel a certain way. She doesn't use that one as much. She doesn't like the idea of forcing people to feel an emotion they don't want to feel. But there are exceptions. 

She hears footsteps. They're soft, like Bruce's. She opens her eyes, sees his feet and legs through the gaps in the stairs and she allows herself to connect with his heart for a moment. She'd learned that different feelings had different tangible sensory properties. Anger was numb and prickling and fuzzy, like the staticky feeling of a leg falling asleep. Rage was explosive and unstable, like a firecracker that might go off at any moment. Sadness was heavy. Sorrow was crushing. Guilt was burning, and felt funny behind her belly button. Happiness was warm and bright. Love felt encompassing and strong. Insecurity felt shaky, like nerves that couldn't be calmed. Fear felt thick and suffocating. Bruce feels mostly at peace. She smiles. He's soft-spoken and gentle, and fun to talk to. She's never even heard him raise his voice. But if she probes deeper, she can feel guilt. An ocean of it, and more. It burns white hot and fills her entire body and takes her breath away, and beneath it all is an ever-present anger, hissing and flickering like low burning flames. This is the part of her powers she doesn't like. Sometimes she learns things she didn't want to know and feels like an intruder. She doesn't know why Bruce would have that much guilt swirling around, but she isn't sure she wants to find out. 

She shuts him out and goes back to her sketching and brushes away the tears she didn't realize were brimming in her eyes. Feeling what others feel comes at a cost.  

* * *

Her bedroom is painted sky blue with silver stars across the ceiling and strands of lights wound around the bedposts and doorframe. Soft light calms her. There's an easel by the window and stacks of worn leather journals on her desk filled with thoughts and doodles and the occasional pressed flower. Her sneakers are by the door for easy access. Painted on the door in dark blue paint is her name. Sylvia. Named for the the uncle she never knew but whose loss she can feel in her mother's sadness like a hole in her chest. She lives on the base full time with her mother, along with some of the others, and this is the only home and family she's ever known. It's always been just her and her mother, but here she has nine other brothers and sisters and close bonds with some of the other Avengers. They could get an apartment somewhere in the city, just the two of them– Clint and Ace did– but neither of them wanted that. She knew her mother liked the sense of family just as she did. 

It's late one night when she wakes with a start, breathing heavy and bolting upright. She can feel it pounding in her chest and forming a scream in her throat and filling her veins with a heaviness unlike any she's ever felt on her own. It takes her several minutes to catch her breath. She knows what this is. Sometimes feelings can reach her while she's asleep if they're unusually strong, and some can even bring her out of a deep sleep, but this is different. This is raw pain. She feels as though her heart has been clawed from her chest and her entire world has crumbled.

Her mother is having a nightmare.

When she manages to calm her racing heart enough to think straight, she grabs her teddy bear, climbs out of bed, and tiptoes down the hallway until she reaches her mother's room. She pushes the door open, walks across the room to her bedside and tries to shake her awake. 

"Mama, mama wake up," she says earnestly in Sokovian. Her mother isn't tossing and turning much but her brow is furrowed and she flinches and whimpers slightly. 

 _"Mama,"_ she says again, shaking her harder until her mother opens her eyes and gasps. 

"Sylvie what... What are you doing awake?" she says in English, sitting up and looking around her frantically as if trying to find any traces from whatever was haunting her dreams. "What... Where..." Her breathing quickens until it becomes too quick for her to catch and she puts her hands to her temples and squeezes her eyes shut. 

"You had a nightmare, Mama, I could feel it," she says softly. "It's alright, I'm here now. Just breathe, that's it..." 

It's not working. It must have been a vivid nightmare or a traumatizing event that her mother had been forced to relive, but whatever the reason, she's still in distress. Sylvia takes a deep breath, focuses, and projects a feeling of calm and peace onto her mother. Her mother knows what's happening– Sylvia's eyes flash ice blue when she does this just as her eyes flash red when she uses her own powers– but it succeeds in slowing her heart rate and allowing her to catch her breath. Sylvia increases the intensity of the projection until her mother's breathing is normal and she isn't crying anymore. She lowers her back onto her pillow, tucks the blankets around her chin, and snuggles up next to her as her mother drifts off to a dreamless and peaceful sleep. 

She never uses this side of her powers. But there are exceptions. 

* * *

 "Why are we doing this again?"

"Because it's fun."

"It's fun for you, you're the only one who can draw."

"You can draw!"

"Yeah, right."

Sylvia giggles and looks down at her sketchbook, twirling her pen between her fingers. She's sitting on one end of the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest, and facing her, doing the same with her own sketchbook, is her 13 year old best friend. Anya frowns and wrinkles her eyebrows– not unlike the expression her mother frequently makes– as she edits her drawing. 

"Aren't you done yet?" Sylvia fidgets and taps her pen against the sketchbook.

"Chill."

"I wanted to go with the others to the park and they're leaving soon, come on!"

"Oh alright, alright," Anya sighs. "Why don't you talk this much around everyone else?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe I like you better than everyone else." 

Anya grins. "Sure. But really, why?"

Sylvia looks down and frowns. "I don't know. I like to listen," she says finally. "I don't like to say anything unless I have something of value to say. And it's... It's hard knowing how everyone else in the room is feeling and then trying to have a conversation with them. Like 'Oh hi Tony, nice to see you, how's that crippling anxiety treating you these days?' 'Thank you Bruce, my day was fine, can you pass the potatoes and bring me up to speed on that crushing guilt you're dealing with?' 'Yes mom, I finished my homework, why are you so sad?'" Her tone is flippant but Anya's eyes are wide. 

"Holy shit," Anya says, glancing up. "I knew you could do that but I didn't think about what it really means to be able to do that."

"It's okay, I can block it out most of the time and control it."

"There are times I wish I could do that," Anya says, staring off into the distance. She tucks a lock of auburn hair behind an ear. "Maybe then I'd know what my mother is really feeling sometimes. It's kind of creepy when she does that stoic thing." 

"I could tell you, if you want." 

Anya shakes her head. "I don't think even you could be able to tell. She's better than anyone else on the planet at hiding how she really feels and putting on faces."

"Everyone does that, some are just better at it than others. Even your mother feels things deep down enough. But I'm warning you, most people shove things that far down because they don't want anyone to know they're there. So there's probably a reason she does that."

"You're probably right," Anya says, sighing. "Oh well."

"Are you done yet?"

"Oh I guess so, no amount of extra shading is going to do this any good..."

Sylvia grins. "Okay then. One, two, three!"

They turn their sketchbooks around at the same time, showing each other the portraits they sketched of each other. Anya yells in frustration and Sylvia starts laughing so hard she can't breathe. 

"SYLVIA MAXIMOFF DON'T YOU DARE LAUGH."

"I'm not, I'm just– it's so cute!"

"How are you  _that good_ at this, jeez..."

Anya's portrait of Sylvia is lopsided and heavy-handed, but not terribly bad. She got the hair right and drew one good eye. Sylvia's portrait of Anya is remarkably lifelike and emotive; she's staring at a fixed point without smiling, but she doesn't look angry. She looks contemplative.

"You'll do better next time, I promise!"

"Oh no, we are not doing this again."

Sylvia giggles again. Anya sticks her tongue out. 

"What are you two doing?" Natasha appears out of nowhere, leaning in beside Anya's head and whispering in her ear. Anya screams and Sylvia laughs harder. Nat's eyes sparkle. 

"MOM."

"I thought you could hear me coming."

"No one ever hears you coming, I'm not even sure you have feet."

Nat kisses her daughter on the cheek and looks down at the sketchbook on her lap. 

"Who's that supposed to be?"

Anya stares at the ceiling and exhales loudly. 

"Me," Sylvia says. "Can't you tell?" Anya kicks her. 

"It's very good, honey," Nat says, laughing. "Let's see yours, Sylvia."

"Let's not," Anya says. 

Sylvia holds hers up and Nat's eyes widen. 

"Oh..." she says softly. "This is beautiful." She traces the paper with delicate fingers and smiles faintly. "Can I have this?"

"Sure." Sylvia tears the page out and hands it to Nat, who folds it into a small square and pockets it. 

"You don't want mine?" Anya twists around to face her. "We can put it on the fridge." 

"I would, but I have to be at a thing and I don't have time to drop it off before I go." She kisses the top of Anya's head and turns to leave. 

"Oh okay, I see how it is!" Anya shouts after her. 

"I love you!" Nat calls out cheerily from down the hall. Anya grumbles "I love you too" back. 

Sylvia smiles again. Moments like these remind her of why she and her mother live on the base. 

"She really does."

Anya turns her head. "Hmm?"

"Love you. She really does."

"Sure she does, my small Sokovian friend."

"I could feel it," Sylvia said. "Every emotion feels different, and what I could feel from her was warm and powerful and strong and I could feel it all the way down to my toes. She loves you."

Anya ducks her head, blushing and smiling. 

"It's some of the strongest love I've ever felt," she continues. "There's also a really strong element of protectiveness in there too, she'd probably kill anyone who ever tried to hurt you."

"Oh no, she would kill them and bring them back to life just to kill them again," Anya says breezily, but she can't hide the glowing smile still on her face. 

Sylvia laughs. This is the part of her powers she likes. 


End file.
